http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
MAYBE GEORGE W. BUSH couldn't name the leader of little Swaziland last November in a pop quiz administered by a radio jock (who apparently could name very little himself with a No. 2 pencil back in high school). But Bush can name the former Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, and with some precision.

In a bid for the Washington press corps vote, Bush recently let slip into an open microphone his identification of Times reporter Adam Clymer as a "major-league a..hole."

Interestingly enough, those who know Clymer best were the least nonplussed by Bush's taxonomy.

Bush hasn't apologized for the substance of his remark, and to paraphrase Al Gore, the truth is his friend. Consider these few random facts about Clymer:

In his fawning hagiography of Teddy Kennedy, Clymer wrote that Kennedy's liberal voting record made up for his killing that girl at Chappaquiddick. I didn't believe it either, but Clymer actually wrote: Kennedy's "achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne." (A review in The Washington Monthly said Clymer's Chappaquiddick section did "not sugarcoat his subject's flaws.")

This is the way addled liberals really think. Even as they champion sucking the brains out of little babies, they think of themselves as indelibly compassionate because they favor an overweening, behemoth federal government.

More recently, Clymer justified the media's near-obsessive search for evidence of George Bush's purported college drug use as a natural reaction to "Mr. Bush's claim to success in fighting crime and drugs as governor." So political achievements of a liberal Democrat eradicate private matters like killing a girl; but the political accomplishments of a Republican merely sound a clarion call for greater press scrutiny into the politician's private life.

Clymer derisively dismissed Bush's complaints about the endless and baseless drug probes, saying that what Bush had been through "does not even remotely compare with the interrogations faced by Sen. Gary Hart before he dropped out of the Democratic race in 1987, or by Bill Clinton, who withstood accusations of adultery and draft-dodging before winning the Democratic nomination in 1992."

Uh, yeah. That's because Hart and Clinton were lying. They were lying to the press, to the public, and -- as if this would matter to a sensitive liberal male like Clymer -- to their wives and families. Moreover, both were lying about conduct they engaged in while serving the public. No one cared whether Clinton or Hart had cheated on his girlfriends in college; the question was whether the public could trust these guys any more than their wives could.

Several years ago (so long ago that feminists were still against sexual harassment), it was Clymer who publicized the illegally recorded cell-phone call among various Republican House leaders, including Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich. A couple of "average citizens," who happened to be Democrats, happened to tune into a private conversation that happened to come across their police scanner, and since they happened to have a recording device right there in the car with them, they were able to tape-record the speaker's private conversation.

Of course, this was so long ago, it was even before Linda Tripp had turned covert taping of telephone calls into the only recognizable transgression against God and man. Since the "average citizens" who taped Gingrich's call were not parties to the conversation, as Tripp was to hers, their illegal tape-recording was unquestionably illegal -- under federal law and in every state in the union.

But Clymer dismissed concerns about using a patently illegal tape on the grounds that "whatever its ancestry," the tape demonstrated Newt Gingrich's perfidy. (Forget Mary Jo; the drunken slob is for big federal government.)

In 1997, Clymer viciously berated a couple of Capitol Hill cops who had requested that he not walk in a roped-off area. A spokesman for the police reported that "Mr. Clymer became belligerent and started using profanities." Another cop was called in, and Clymer cussed him out, too. After an account of Clymer's tantrum was published in The Washington Times, Clymer sneered at the police who had leaked word of the altercation, saying "a real police force" would have talked to him before going to the press.

The cops undoubtedly belong to one of those "working families" the Democrats constantly bleat about. Perhaps like Teddy Kennedy, Clymer's liberalism overshadows how he treats real
people.

09/12/00: The Supreme Court ratchet09/08/00: Our mistake -- keep polluting09/05/00: Bubba protects and serves09/01/00: AlGore's 'going out of business!' tax plan08/29/00: Bush's compassionate conservatism08/25/00: Space alien tells funny jokes in bathtub08/22/00: Dems view world only in black and white, not in color08/18/00: Another Damascus Road conversion08/15/00: The viagra cotillion08/11/00: The hand-wringing Hamlet from Hartford08/07/00: The Democratic party's white face08/04/00: Hillary's potty mouth08/01/00: The hole in the story07/28/00: Cheney's detractors can't get their story straight07/25/00: AlGore: Elmer Blandry07/21/00: The tyranny of non-objectivity07/18/00: The state's religion07/14/00: Reform it back07/11/00: Keating for veep07/07/00: Gore invented 'Clueless'07/04/00: The stupidity litmus test 06/30/00: O.J. was 'proved innocent' too06/27/00: The last guys 'proved innocent' 06/23/00: Serious Republican candidates don't get serious press 06/19/00: They weren't overzealous this time 06/16/00: Evolution of the strumpet06/13/00: Actual journalistic malpractice 06/09/00: I did not have sexual relations with that ... man! 06/06/00: IRS turns Bubba's screw05/30/00: Too corrupt to be an Arkansas lawyer 05/26/00: Choose liberalism 05/24/00: Violence against coherence 05/22/00: Developmentally disabled Republicans 05/16/00: For womb the bell tolls 05/12/00: Asylum from Georgetown 05/10/00: The truth is out there, even for the clueless 05/08/00: Barbie is a liberal Democrat 05/02/00: Moving the goalpost 04/28/00: The bastardization of justice 04/25/00: How Monica Lewinsky saved the constitution 04/24/00: It's sunny today, so we need gun control 04/19/00: No shadow of a doubt -- liberal women are worthless 04/14/00:
It takes a Communist dictator to raise a child 04/11/00: The verdict is in on Hillary 04/07/00: Vast Concoctions III 04/04/00: 'Horrifying' free speech in New York 03/31/00: Campaign finance reform brings out worst in senators 03/28/00: All the news that fits -- we print! 03/24/00: Net losses all around 03/20/00: To protect, serve --- and be spat on 03/16/00: Thank Heaven for the consigliere 03/13/00: Vast concoctions II 03/09/00: The bluebloods voted against you 03/07/00: The Tower of Babble 03/03/00: Vast concoction 03/02/00: Hillary's sartorial lies 02/28/00: You have to break a few eggs to make a joke 02/22/00: I've seen enough killing to support abortion02/18/00: A liberal lynching 02/15/00: McCain and the flag 02/11/00: The Shakedown Express02/08/00: To mock a mockingbird 02/05/00: Summing up Campaign 2000: 'Oh, puh-leeze!'02/01/00: A Confederacy of Dunces01/28/00: Dollar Bill's racist smear 01/24/00: How high is your freedom quotient? 01/21/00: Numismadness 01/18/00: How dare you attack my wife! 01/14/00: The Gore Buggernaut 01/10/00: The paradox of discrimination law